Huis Clos

In addition to being a personal experience, Huis Clos is entirely composed of unfinished projects that I pulled out from my archives and reinjected into Logic. The aim is to give a direction to each track so the album isn’t a simple compilation. There are a lot of samples, mostly unrecognizable and some live instruments : electric guitar, acoustic guitar, bass and even bass played with a bow, all recorded through a Joe Meek ThreeQ.

Technically the work was about restoring old audio files, removing clicks, restructuring tracks entirely. There was a lot of editing from my side. As the result felt a bit too gloomy, I decided to invite friends to play on these tracks, so they bring a spark of fantasy.

Huis Clos production coincides with the time where I finally had a proper homestudio : Prodipe Pro 8 monitoring speakers, Axiom 25 keyboard, Ableton Live software.

This is my first experience of “album direction” from the idea to the object. I hope I will do it again in the future or help other artists to do it. That kind of concept album is a real pleasure to make if you stick to a few rules.

– diversity in your tracks, explore a few leads is always good

– know where is your beginning, and your end, as in a scenario

– fix a budget and stick to it

– control every step and link everything. In the end, there is only one object. It’s better if it’s consistent.

– be sure you have an answer for every choice you made. If you leave anything to someone else, it has to be your initiative.

I’m not pretending those advices are true for everyone but they did work for me.